When Politics Goes Viral

By James Poniewozik

It's a simple video -- a TV actor speaking about his illness, his body wracked by spasms. In the pantheon of YouTube phenomena, Michael J. Fox's Missouri Senate ad is no Evolution of Dance or lonelygirl15. Unlike the online videos that usually catch on, it has no white rappers or cool choreographed treadmill routines; no one lip-synchs or makes a geyser with Diet Coke and Mentos. Yet this short TV spot may have done more than any other to show YouTube's potential as a political force. In the ad, Fox, a longtime Parkinson's disease sufferer, endorsed Democratic Senate hopeful Claire McCaskill and criticized her opponent, Senator Jim Talent, for opposing "expanding stem-cell research." Last week radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Fox of either acting or going off his meds to exaggerate the ravages of the disease. (If you were an admitted prescription- pill addict, you might hesitate to lecture a beloved, seriously ill star about his medication. But that's why you do not host the most popular radio show in America.) Other Fox critics enlisted the Son of God: James Caviezel (Jesus from The Passion of the Christ). He and Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond), among others, argued in a response video against a state constitutional amendment to legalize embryonic-stem-cell research.

All that attention not only made the Fox ad the most-watched video on YouTube last week but also raised the viral-video site's political profile. For all the hype over "The YouTube Election" (as the New York Times dubbed it), Web video has not proved to be a persuasion tool. It is an opt-in medium: you have to seek out videos or click on an e-mail link, whereas TV ads crawl through your cable line and hunt you down. In the partisan world of political websites, there are few undecideds; we are not exactly a society of people who surf the Web to find arguments that we disagree with. So YouTube has mainly been useful for embarrassing enemies (popularizing Senator George Allen's macaca campaign-stump slur) or preaching to the converted (through videos of commentators like Michelle Malkin and Stephen Colbert).

But the Fox scuffle shows YouTube's potential to preach to the unconverted. About 2 million people watched the Fox ad on YouTube last week, and more than 600,000 the rebuttal. That pales before a TV audience--until you realize that this means some 2 million people are watching political ads on purpose.

More important, many of them were probably not partisans but people who might not have paid any attention to the stem-cell issue before the celebrity dustup roused their curiosity. (Just what made Rush so mad? How shaky does Alex P. Keaton look now, anyway?) In a past election, viewers might have seen the controversial ads only if they lived in Missouri or caught them on the news. Now they can find them, in full, at their leisure. They can also expand on, rebut or parody the ads, as numerous YouTubers did, including breatheasy7000, a woman whose 17-second video in support of Fox drew 200,000 views on the apparent oratorical draw that she's smokin' hot.

In other words, the controversy took a local race and--through YouTube's free distribution--nationalized it. The Democrats, whose holy grail has been to nationalize the midterms, owe Limbaugh a fruit basket. (The flap probably had less effect in Missouri, where the ads would have got notice anyway.) True, Rush's side got exposure too, but on a national level the Fox video seems more effective. It discusses the issue in emotional terms that people in any state can understand (whether or not they agree). The response ad begins, bafflingly, with Caviezel speaking in untranslated Aramaic, the historical language of Christ. And casting the issue in terms of a ballot initiative leaves the national audience to wonder: What's Amendment 2? And why is Raymond's wife so cheesed about it?

That is to say, it will take a certain kind of political spot to utilize YouTube's force-multiplying power. Web video is like a pop single: an attention-getting hook is important. Fox's baring his frailty was particularly YouTube-friendly because the medium rewards authentic, verite captured moments. (It also rewards shock and humor, which could favor outrageous ads.) A universal, direct message is key. (No dead languages, for instance.) Above all, even local admakers should remember that now they have a potential national audience a click away--one that can engage their ads by creating its own spots and ripostes.

"They say all politics is local," Fox says in the ad. "But that's not always the case." Not anymore. Once politics goes viral, there's no cure.